


blaze

by artificialmeggie (ohmymeggs), holtzmanns



Series: Behind Closed Doors [6]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Avengers Anthology, M/M, Sick Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 16:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19833820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmymeggs/pseuds/artificialmeggie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtzmanns/pseuds/holtzmanns
Summary: In which a fever lowers the burning in Vanessa and Brooke’s hearts. Though only temporarily.





	blaze

**Author's Note:**

> This was very nearly a drabble about Brooke getting blazed (hashtag 420) but we’re here instead. Maybe another time?

Brooke is a hoverer.

Vanessa can tell from the way that Brooke keeps peeking his head into the room, asking him how he is, if there’s anything he can get at all, can he check his temperature again _just one more time-_

He’s hovering.

Brooke’s anxiety rolls off of him in waves, a visible aura that shimmers and distorts the air around his body. He tuts, fiddles with the blankets around Vanessa for the fiftieth time that day because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Vanessa lets him.

The fever of 102 is most definitely affecting Vanessa’s brain, colouring the world around him with hues of red and orange that match the blazing sickness that is flowing through his veins. He’s freezing cold, he’s hot, he’s sweating enough that when Brooke tugs on his arm to get into the shower and regulate his body temperature, he doesn’t argue.

He lets Brooke wrap him in towels to dry him off and dress him in clean clothes. He lets Brooke tuck him back into the hotel bed, lets him climb under the covers and pull him into his side where Vanessa has always fit, like a puzzle piece on Brooke’s incomplete heart.

It’s not the first time he’s let Brooke fret over him like this when he’s sick. It’s happened once before, last September when Vanessa was touring and Brooke was still in Nashville and Vanessa had a gig at Play. Brooke had taken one look at his face when he came to pick him up from the airport and immediately made their next stop a CVS pharmacy.

Brooke had fed him chicken soup, placed the cats on top of him on the couch for extra cuddles, put on _The Notebook_ in the background and let Vanessa nap with his head on his lap. Brooke’s fingers had run through his hair, soothing his weary mind and leading him to dreamless sleep.

He had still performed that night, still stepped off of the stage after each number with his head spinning, but Brooke had been there to catch him, to pull him into a hug and sit him down, fingers tracing up and down his back.

Vanessa had been tired, drained, determined to push on with his gigs, but coming to Nashville that night had felt strangely like home.

No, Nashville wasn’t home. Brooke was.

It almost feels like déjà vu now, but not quite – a déjà vu where things are only _slightly_ different, slightly off. Brooke’s doting is no longer self-assured; it’s tentative, wired with an electric current that spreads throughout the room and is visible to them both. Brooke’s movements are more urgent, more frantic than the last time that Vanessa was sick. As if he’s scared to lose Vanessa, as if seeing him feverish and weak means that he is starting to slip away from his grasp.

Some things, though, are the same. The way that Brooke’s fingers are running through his hair, in a soft pattern that is lulling him to sleep. The way that Brooke smells like a mix of detergent and aftershave and soap, the way that his red sweater is soft on Vanessa’s cheek as he leans against it. The way that Brooke’s other arm is wrapped around Vanessa almost protectively, holding him tight in the way that he does when he’s feeling particularly affectionate.

A selfish part of Vanessa almost doesn’t want to get better. He can take the chills, the fever if it means he can keep his soft Brooke, his doting Brooke, his Brooke that immediately drops whatever he’s doing as soon as he sees Vanessa looking the slightest bit unwell. 

If he gets better, they will lapse back into their new normal. They’ll go back to tentative glances, shared jokes with laughs that don’t quite reach their eyes. The nights with bruising touches and marks left on their necks and gasping out the others’ names, only for one of them to leave shortly after. Ones that blaze with a deep fire only to be put out with ice water as soon as they start. Nights where neither of them stay overnight, no tangled limbs or synchronized breathing with heavy sleep. They’ll sleep alone in separate rooms, in hotel beds that feel too vast, too expansive, arms too empty without being able to hold one another. 

For now, they’re neither a burning fire nor frosted into ice. They’re twin pieces of ember, warm and glowing from the inside out in a way that they haven’t been since they ended things with a door slam and a broken goodbye that didn’t last. 

Vanessa can feel Brooke’s hand on his warm cheek, hear his soft voice whispering his name. He looks up at Brooke and sees the worry and _care_ in his eyes and wishes he could keep it there forever somehow. Vanessa reaches up without thinking, fingers tracing along Brooke’s jawline and neck, nestling amongst the soft curls on the back of his head. Brooke leans into his touch as easy as falling asleep. 

It feels easy. It _should_ be this easy, both of them remaining in this crackling, warm state where nothing burns, nothing hurts, neither of them getting frostbite from the sheaths of ice that hold all of their baggage and threaten to push them apart. 

“I need to go paint before tonight’s show.” Brooke’s words are soft, tentative as if not to break whatever strange spell has been cast between them. 

“Don’t leave.” The words are out before Vanessa can pull them back and tuck them away where Brooke can’t see them, see his hurt.

Brooke opens his mouth to protest, but Vanessa cuts him off before he can. 

“No, I _know_ you have to go paint.” Vanessa makes a face while trying to put the words together. He knows what he wants to say but doesn’t know how to put it together in a way that makes sense, not with a brain muddled with cold medicine and an off kilter circadian rhythm. 

“I mean just…don’t leave. In general. You can’t say you want space then act like this then go back to being distant again first thing tomorrow. I-“ He lets out a breath, trying to ignore the pulsing in his head. “What are we doing, Brooke?”

“I don’t know.” He almost doesn’t hear Brooke’s whisper, the way it breaks slightly on his next words. “Do you want me to go?”

“No.” Vanessa’s answer is immediate. It’s true, he doesn’t. It fucking hurts, knowing they won’t stay like this, but he can take the premature longing. He doesn’t want it to end yet, no matter how much sitting like this is beginning to frost over their embered hearts.

“I know you’re not in a space for commitment or anything right now.” He pauses, watches Brooke’s face, the exhaustion on his face mirroring his own. “I just don’t want to keep bouncing back and forth from you like a fucking pinball. It ain’t healthy.” 

Brooke doesn’t answer for what feels like hours on end, though the clock on the dresser tells Vanessa that only twelve seconds pass. 

“We shouldn’t have this conversation now, not while you’re still running a fever and definitely high on cold meds.” His voice comes out quiet enough that Vanessa almost doesn’t hear it.

“I’m not high. Not the good kind of high, at least. And why the fuck can’t we?”

Brooke sighs. “Because I have to paint and go do this show, and you need to rest and get better so you can do so at the next stop, too.” 

It’s not the reason, and they both know it. Vanessa knows Brooke and his tendency to add more and more bricks to the walls around his heart as soon as someone tries to fight their way inside. 

Brooke lifts Vanessa up gently to slide out from underneath him and puts him back on the bed, tucks the covers back around him. Vanessa wants to argue, to tell him all of the reasons that he needs to stay (not stay in the room, but _stay,_ really stay), but he’s tired. Tired of this sickness that feels like it’ll never fade, tired of the chill that threatens to take over his heart and has already grasped that of Brooke’s. 

He’ll bring it up again. When he’s stronger and feeling better and Brooke is tugging him into his room and placing fire laced kisses along his collarbone that they’ll both inevitably regret in the morning when the burns hurt too much. 

For now, though, he watches him go.

**Author's Note:**

> The eighth in the Behind Closed Doors Series. We'll be posting one for the next three days until the entire series is complete.


End file.
